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-----"We must get her to the temple. There we can keep her body warm and offer more prayers," Zan quickly says. At Rinda’s urging, Raven steps in and hoists the small frame of Sarah into his arms. As gently but quickly as he can, he carries Sarah out to the wagon. Rinda, Zan and the drivers climb into the wagon and Rinda tells Raven, "Bring the horses! I’ll try to heal her more before we get to the temple!"
-----After a hurried ride across the village, Sarah is carried into the temple where the priest makes a makeshift bed for her in one of the side rooms. After a few minutes of tending by both Rinda and Zan, Rinda speaks with Raven. "Though there are no wounds on her body, she has been attacked. She has met something or someone that has nearly killed her. She is resting now but she will need a couple of days to recover. Even then, I don’t know if she will be fully well. She was not herself in her mind before she fell asleep."
-----After about an hour, Sol comes dashing inside the temple. He sees Raven and Rinda standing in the sanctuary with the priest, Zan. Seeing the intense look in his face, Rinda explains that somehow Sarah had fallen victim to some kind of attack and she now lies in one of the side rooms critically ill.
-----Sol begins pacing from one end of the temple to the other, "What happened? I mean exactly. 'Somehow' doesn't really explain a lot. And ill? Has she been wounded..." He halts his pacing and lets out a long sigh. "Sorry. I thought..." Sol stops talking again and closes his eyes. When they re-open, he heads to the temple exit. "I need some air." Then he leaves.
-----Kazel and Seth arrive soon after Sol and about a half-hour more, the Dread Pirate comes huffing and puffing in.
-----"Let me guess, our mineral expert showed her the 'other uses' of the crystal as promised?" Kazel calmly breaks out her water skin and quaffs from it after the hard ride. Leaning on a wall, she looks around the inside of the temple a bit for the first time. "Where's her horse, anyway?"
-----Seth looks at Zan the Priest. "Well, you’re a priest, right? Well, heal her!"
-----Raven moves toward Seth and says to him in a low and tired voice, "Seth I know you mean well, but yelling at Zan won't help Sarah. I think she was attacked by some magical means. I didn't see any wounds, but she was nearly dead when we found her. Do you have any way to see what kind of magic was used on her?" Raven looks over toward the room where Sarah is resting, "I say we should try to find that gem expert and see what happened. I might be able to find some tracks where we found Sarah."
-----Raven pauses as he seems to remember something, "Where were you all? Did you go see Sir Hampton?"
-----To Kazel, Raven says, "We don't know what happened. As for her horse, I'd like to go back to where we found her and look around. We need to pull together now as a group and try to find who did this."
-----Kazel puts her waterskin away. "How about starting from inside the tavern where the rest of us last saw her. Where did things go from there?" She also looks at Rinda for any elaboration on the events.
-----Rinda looks down at the floor, weariness registering on her face. "Sarah was determined to leave with the young man she found. There was no stopping her. They left and Raven and I were waiting for the rest of you to return."
-----The Huntress gets a strained look on her face as if thinking through what she is saying, "Later on, I don’t know how to explain it, but I got a strange sense that something was wrong. Raven and I left the tavern to find Zan and some men heading toward a building down the way. We followed them and found Sarah inside the building close to death. Zan and I applied healing spells and we brought her here."
-----Turning toward Raven, Rinda says, "I should stay here in case Sarah needs me. Are you going back to that building tonight or in the morning?"
-----Raven says, "You're right, Sarah needs you now, so you should stay here. I'd like to go back to that building right now before any tracks go cold." Raven turns to the group here, "Who will come with me?"
-----After hearing Raven’s answer, Rinda then goes outside to speak with Sol.
-----Seth nods. "I’ll go with you. I don't really know any magic that hurts people or heals them, so I am no use here. By the way, why was the priest with some men heading towards the building Sarah was in? Did he too feel something or hear something?"
-----"Yeah, I'll come." Sol says as he re-enters the temple with Rinda. "If there's any chance of catching the bastard who did this, then I will be there." He glances at Rinda, as if to say his mind's made up.
-----The Dread Pirate listens to everyone's comments and opinions before venturing his own advice, "Arrrr, now what I said before about not goin off by yerself has been put to the test. As callous as it sounds, I'm not feelin real sorry fer our arrogant, little wizardess in there. Ye go against sound tactical doctrine and ye pay the price. It'd be a shame if'n her death were the price she has to pay fer her pigheadedness, but I won't shed any tears over it either. As fer checkin out the building, let’s hold on fer a minute and devise a sound plan of attack afore we go chargin off into what could very well be an insidious trap designed to lure us all in. It wouldn't be the first time that someone has been wounded and his buddies are killed tryin to save him."
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